


The Adventures of Jon the Token Straight Guy in the Land of Gay Mormons

by stele3



Series: The Gay Mormons [2]
Category: Bandom, Panic! at the Disco
Genre: M/M, Multi, Polyamory, Tom Conrad is made of magic and cheap liquor, jon walker as pancea
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-22
Updated: 2013-02-22
Packaged: 2017-12-03 07:05:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,611
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/695554
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stele3/pseuds/stele3
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This story is about friendship.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Adventures of Jon the Token Straight Guy in the Land of Gay Mormons

_August 13, 2006_  
  
“I think my band is breaking up,” Jon tells his phone.  
  
The line is silent for a long moment. Then Tom says, tinny with distance, “Wanna get drunk?”  
  
“I kind of already partly am?” Jon lifts the bottle of rum off of his belly, where it’s been serving as a paperweight to the rum already _in_ his belly. The ruddy liquid sloshes as he waggles it back and forth. He’s lying on his back with his feet dangling over the edge of the mattress, toes barely swishing the hotel carpet as he twitches his feet back and forth. He’s supposed to be sharing with Spencer tonight, but Spencer isn’t here.  
  
“You,” Tom says. He sounds a lot more than partly already kind of drunk. “You guys. Are nominated for a bunch of VMAs. I saw.”  
  
“I wasn’t even in that video.”  
  
“Good, it was weird. The stilts guy freaked me out.”  
  
They snigger at each other. Tom has this really dorky chuckle, a super-low _hunh-hunh-hunh-hunh_ that he’s all self-conscious about. He only whips it out when he’s pretty sozzled but it makes Jon grin all the same.  
  
“We should start our own band,” Tom says, and Jon barks with laughter; starting a band is Tom’s solution to pretty much any major life problem. “Shut up, I’m serious.” There’s rustling. Jon tries to think of where he is. “We can, like, remix American folks songs.”  
  
“Can you play the banjo?”  
  
“No. Can you?”  
  
“No.”  
  
“No to the banjo, then. Hey, that’ll be our name. No To The Banjo.”  
  
Jon sighs. “This was a really awesome month.”  
  
“Yeah. Yeah.”  
  
They sit for a while in silence. Jon lets himself feel maudlin for a bit before shaking it off, kicking his legs against the side of the bed. This month _has_ been fun. He got to be in a headlining band, out under the bright lights; he’s earned enough money to hang in Chicago for a while as he figures out the next step. He can see Cassie for longer than five minutes. It sounds like it’d be a good thing for him to get where Tom is, too. Jon’s got no regrets about saying yes to Panic!, and he hopes that none of them have regrets about him. Of course he could ask for more, but all told, he’s pretty content with what he got. What will happen will happen.  
  
Tom starts humming something idly, a made-up tune in F-sharp, and Jon hums back the accompaniment. “Maybe we won’t even need instruments,” he says after a while. “Super-low production costs, no setup or breakdown. We can just hum into a mic.”  
  
“That’s pretty gay,” Tom whispers.  
  
“Don’t say that shit, asshole. And why are you whispering?”  
  
“Sisky’s asleep, I’m trying not to wake him. He’s got this freaky eye-thing going on, yo – you know how some people sleep with their eyes, like, open just a little bit? He’s doing that right now.”  
  
“Are you sure that he’s not just awake and looking at you?”  
  
“Sisky, hey Sisk – Jonny Walker wants to fist you, yes or no.” A pause. “Yeah, no, he’s asleep.”  
  
They snigger at each other a little more, and Jon feels the knot in his gut unwind a bit. Most of the time this is all it takes. “Aight,” he says, leaning over the bedside with a groan to put the bottle down on the floor. “I’m gonna pass out, now.”  
  
“Aight. Sleep on your side! Oh, shit, sorry Sisky, go back to sleep, everything’s fine.”  
  
Jon hangs up laughing.  
  
He wakes sometime later when the door closes, and rolls over, ready to get up if somebody needs something. “Hyulloh?”  
  
There’s enough of a pause that he sits up onto an elbow, trying to see around the corner. Then Brendon says, “Hi, hey, Jon, hi.”  
  
Jon scrunches his legs up and pushes the sheets off with his feet. Brendon sways a bit in the small entryway, smiling small and uncertain. The light above him catches in all the wrong places on his face. “J’you trade with Spence?” Jon asks, finding his feet and his voice in a hurry.  
  
Brendon shrugs. “Zack musta switched us up.”  
  
Jon blinks then counts in his head. That makes for – five people who have figured out what’s going on here. Everyone else probably chalks it up to Wilson suing them, and Ryan’s dad… well, Ryan’s dad, yeah. They’re not really wrong, there, just in the ways that count. “You good, man?”  
  
“Yeah,” Brendon says. “Sure.” He goes into the bathroom, shuts the door, and locks it behind him with a click.  
  
Jon frowns at the door, but his brain, having deduced that it’s not really needed, has already started shutting back down. Shuffling back to the bed, he nudges his way under the crumpled, scratchy sheets.  
  
In the bathroom, there’s the sound of retching. Jon sighs, scooting back to sit against the headboard. He switches on the TV.  
  
He wakes up again when a door closes. “Hyulloh?” he calls again before he spots Brendon standing at the foot of his bed, looking a little steadier but just as breakable.  
  
“I _hate_ the taste of vomit,” Brendon says. He’s changed into a pair of sweatpants and his hair is damp. He sits down with his back to Jon. “I used your mouthwash, sorry.”  
  
“Coo’,” Jon murmurs, rubbing his face. His eyes feel gritty and make tiny squelching noises, like there are pockets of air trapped under his eyelids. “You wanna watch something?”  
  
“No. Sure. What’s – I don’t know what channels we even get. Do we get Cartoon Network, I like Futurama, Bender fucking rules.”  
  
“Think so.” Jon kicks the sheets off and goes to the table, retrieving the channel guide. “Yup. Here we go.” He changes the channel and sits down beside Brendon. Some anime show is on; Jon totally knows the name of it, but he’s too tired to retrieve the information. He sits beside Brendon and stares dumbly at the screen.  
  
The anime episode ends and a new one comes on.  
  
“Why am I – ” Brendon cuts off, but it’s enough for Jon to catch the tenor of his voice and turn quickly. Big, fat tears are rolling down Brendon’s cheeks; he’s crying in total silence, not even a hitch of breath to betray him. If he hadn’t said something, Jon wouldn’t have noticed at all.  
  
“Dude,” Jon whispers, horrified. “Dude, hey. Hey now, come on. Bren.”  
  
“Why am I,” Brendon stammers again, his voice dying into a hard swallow. Jon hooks an arm around his shoulders; he feels like fucking bawling, himself. Watching other people cry always makes him cry, too, and watching Brendon do it is just fucking _torture_. Pete, before Jon had even met Panic, Pete told him about this little band back when they were a little band. He’d called them babies, _the tiniest dudes, Jonny, a bunch of guitar-playing babies_ , like he had room to talk about other people's tininess. Jon doesn’t have a lot of room either, but his arm still fits all the around Brendon's shoulders.  
  
Brendon turns his face into Jon’s chest. Jon hooks his chin over his hair and mentally lists all the ways that this sucks: that Jon has been made into the place of exile; that Zack obviously couldn’t think of any other way to prevent another midnight blowup; that Jon’s only had a month; that they’ve had less than two years; that Ryan’s dad died less than three fucking weeks ago and that’s no excuse, okay, but it _is_ one hell of a reason; that Brendon can’t have known Spencer Smith for more than five years and apparently that was all the time he’d needed to fall hard, hard, hard.  
  
They sit there for a while until Brendon leans back. Jon starts to duck down with an offer of water but gets Brendon’s mouth instead, pressed to his. He freezes automatically, the first blink of a rabbit at the sight of a wolverine. That’s actually not a bad way to describe the way Brendon’s kissing him: fast, desperate bites. One of his hands is fisted in Jon’s faded T-shirt.  
  
Jon doesn’t shove him away. He holds still and lets Brendon kiss him for a few seconds. When he finally moves, it’s to carefully rest his palm against Brendon’s shoulder and shift just enough to free his mouth. “Hey, hey. Man. I love Cassie.”  
  
Brendon freezes too. The TV light glistens off his eyes, his face. His eyelids hang heavy with grief and alcohol. “And I’m straight,” Jon tells him as gently as possible. “And you don’t really want to.”  
  
Brendon blinks then makes this awful face and twists away. Jon catches him quickly. It’s like trying to hold onto an over-sized cat, one that twists with no regard to its own fragile bones and oh, yeah, is a half-naked guy. Jon concentrates on not putting his hand anywhere awkward.  
  
He gets one arm around Brendon’s waist and holds tight. Brendon’s ribcage swells and shrinks against his arm; his breath grinds in his throat. “Hey now.”  
  
“Sorry,” Brendon chokes. “I’m sorry.”  
  
“It’s okay. Promise.” Jon gentles his grip and keeps his tone light. “I teched for The Academy, dude. You are not the first guy to drunkenly stick his tongue down my throat.”  
  
Brendon hiccups a laugh against his shoulder.  
  
A couple hours later Jon wakes up for the third time that night to find Spencer standing beside the bed. They never turned the TV off; still, he’s barely lit as he looms over them. It takes a few moments for Jon’s heart to stop pounding and his sleep-fogged head to leave the ‘murderous serial killer’ place. Brendon’s breath is warm against his collarbone.  
  
Spencer waves a little, silently. Jon unfolds his hand from where it’s cupped around Brendon’s shoulder and waves back then gingerly begins the process of extricating himself from Brendon’s monkey grip, partly because he’s just been place-holding but also to make it perfectly clear that yes, Jon still has his pants on, thank you.  
  
Because this is his third awakening of the night, he allows himself one mean thought as he shuffles toward the door, about how it’s a good thing _someone_ in this band is keeping his pants on. Except then behind him he hears Brendon’s sleepy voice rise in a question, and Spencer’s voice answer rough and low, and Jon can’t hang onto the bad mood. They’re just babies.  
  
Outside, he stands in the hall for a long minute, blinking while his brain wakes up the rest of the way. _It’s been a good month_ , he thinks decisively, and goes looking for coffee.  
  
-o-  
  
 _August 25, 2006_  
  
There’s this weird moment, right after Brendon goes down, where Jon and Ryan both lurch forward, then back, then keep playing. It’s not like they don’t know what just happened – well, _Jon_ knows what just happened – but it’s instinct to keep going. Jon almost never has nightmares, but whenever he does it’s usually something like forgetting to play and everyone turning to glare at him.  
  
So he keeps going, and Ryan keeps going, too. Jon doesn’t know what Ryan’s nightmares look like. Spencer, though, Spencer crashes to a halt. Literally. A cymbal hisses loudly as he lurches forward, arms reaching, elbow banging into his toms.  
  
By then Zack’s there along with some of the venue security. Jon doesn’t know any of them by name. Brendon probably doesn’t, either. Jon can see him blinking up at them all, eyelids moving jerkily like there’s glue on the insides.  
  
On the other side of the little huddled group, Ryan stands with his back to the crowd, his skinny arms loosely folded around his guitar. His face is blank, but his eyes are fixed on Brendon’s legs, the only part of him that Ryan can see.  
  
Pulling his guitar strap over his head, Jon quickly crosses the stage. It’s like passing through a tunnel of sound, with the song’s last notes hanging on one side and the roaring crowd on the other. He keeps his eyes on Ryan until he reaches him and touches his arm.  
  
“What,” Ryan says, and Jon has to read his lips, there’s no way to hear him. “What’s wrong, is he – ”  
  
Jon takes him by the arm and nudged him sideways toward cover, their guitar necks awkwardly knocking together. He gets them over to the side, behind an amp, and puts his mouth to Ryan’s ear. “Bottle,” he says. “He got hit in the head.”  
  
Some of the techs are there, hanging in the same frozen state, staring onstage. “Medic!” Jon shouts over the noise.  
  
One nods reassuringly and gestures over his shoulder then almost goes careening when Spencer ducks around a stage support and crashes into his back. Jon puts up a hand immediately, stepping up just enough to get Spencer’s attention. “He got hit with – ”  
  
“I fucking know,” Spencer yells. “I fucking saw.” He makes to go out onstage, and Ryan has to latch onto the back of his belt with both feet planted to bring him up short. That’s a near miracle: Spencer’s kind of a little guy, but right now the expression on his face could level mountains.  
  
Luckily, the security group comes off the stage right then with Brendon’s sneakers dangling over the side of Zack’s forearm. The cloud of techs disperse, taking Jon and Ryan’s guitars with them, and someone finds Brendon a metal folding chair to sit in. The medic’s there, shining his flashlight and leaning in close to ask questions.  
  
“Did you see who threw it?” Spencer yells.  
  
Jon shakes his head. Hopefully no one else saw anything either. He doubts that Pete’s got the money to bail Spencer out of a murder charge.  
  
They stand behind the amps to wait. There’s nothing else they can do. Everyone else is milling around Brendon, who has to crane his neck way back to look at everybody who’s standing upright and talking over his head. The right side of his face looks reddish, but he seems pretty with it. Spencer’s mouth is moving, spitting out snarls that get lost in the roar. It seems to rise up out of the ground and Jon has to check a couple times to reassure himself that no one is actually rushing the stage. Sometimes it’s hard to tell the happy-roar from the angry kind. This one seems like a mixture. One of the sound people has turned on the fill, a local rock station.  
  
Somehow, somehow, through the rush of sound and the press of security personnel, Ryan reaches Brendon’s side. Jon turns back from checking the stage to find him kneeling right beside the little folding chair and stretching up to talk in Brendon’s ear. Brendon’s head is bowed forward, his face shadowed.  
  
Ryan sits back on his heels, looks up at Brendon. Brendon touches the side of his own face, testing the redness. He nods.  
  
Jon glances sideways at Spencer. He still vibrates with tension, but he’s watching, too. There’s this funny look on his face – not so much with the crazy anymore, now he just looks very, very young. The youngest of the babies.  
  
Ryan winds his way back to them. “We want to finish,” he says to Jon, barely audible.  
  
Jon stares at him. Ryan’s face is blank in that specifically Ryan-blank way. He doesn’t have a ton of makeup on, but it still looks like something he could take off at the end of the night and set on the vanity. Behind him, Brendon is getting up off his chair and ignoring everyone who doesn’t want him to. All around them, the roar howls on.  
  
Jon nods, because what the hell else is he going to say?  
  
Ryan looks past him, at Spencer. “We want to finish.”  
  
It takes a moment, but then Jon feels rather than sees or hears Spencer give his okay.  
  
Afterward, Ryan and Brendon walk off together. That’d be normal except for how it hasn’t happened lately; this time they not only walk off side-by-side, Ryan curls an arm tight around Brendon’s shoulders. Right behind them, Jon can see better than anyone how Brendon awkwardly works a hand up to pat Ryan’s cheek.  
  
-o-  
  
A few days later they win at the VMAs. And then it’s the start of a whole new month.

  
-o-

 _October 17, 2006_  
  
“Jon,” Ryan says with gravity. “I’m going to tell you something shocking. Brace yourself.”  
  
Jon and Brendon both look up from the US Weekly they’ve been reading. Most the pages are torn because Brendon reads faster than Jon. (“Hey, I’m not – turn it back, fucker.” “Augh, augh, no tickling!” “Fuck! No biting!”)  
  
Brendon cuts in as Ryan opens his mouth to continue. “You got a tattoo of John Lennon’s face on your ass.”  
  
“No.”  
  
“You were born with webbed toes.”  
  
“No.” Ryan glares.  
  
“You’ve become a Scientologist and you’re going to make us convert. The bus is surrounded.” Brendon bursts into giggles and deflects the pillow that Ryan hurls at his head. “Tom Cruise wants me to carry his alien baby!”  
  
Ryan sits back and folds his arms, fixing his gaze on the television and ignoring Brendon’s giggles. He hates having his jokes interrupted. Well, he hates being interrupted, period, but Jon can tell that it takes Ryan a while to gear up for being funny, like a nervous platform diver toeing the edge.  
  
“Ryy-aaaan,” he whines, slumping over so that he can poke Ryan’s thigh. Brendon is still giggling and Jon digs the knuckles of one foot into his back. He’s not doing it to be mean, Jon thinks, they haven’t been _mean_ to each other lately; Brendon just has a much higher tolerance level for teasing. The gulf between an only child and the youngest of five.  
  
“Ryan,” he tries again, lolling his head on the seat and making upside-down puppy eyes at Ryan, pouting. “I’m hanging in suspense, man. Don’t leeeeeave meeeee here.”  
  
Ryan rolls his eyes but edges back toward the pool. “I just thought you’d want to know, y’know…we’re gonna be in Amsterdam tomorrow.”  
  
“We are,” Jon confirms. He feels his face twitch into a grin. Oh boy oh boy.  
  
“Well, it might be a point of some interest and concern, then,” Ryan says, regaining his mock-gravity and folding his hands across his ribs, “that Spencer has never gotten high.”  
  
Jon blinks. Against his foot, Brendon twitches and then starts squawking, “What! What! Spencer! _Spencer Smith, come in here and –_ ”  
  
“Sh!” Ryan yelps.  
  
“ – _refute these horrible lies!_ ”  
  
“He’s asleep!” Ryan lunges forward, flapping his hands at Brendon like he’s shooing pigeons. “He’s sleeping, you fucktard!”  
  
“ _What_ ,” Spencer’s sleep-rough voice barks from the bunks.  
  
The two of them freeze in place, their eyes bugging out at each other like kids in a slasher movie who have just heard a chainsaw sputter to life down the hall. Jon sits up; he’s never woken Spencer from a nap before, but he’s heard stories.  
  
Something hits the floor in the bunks and Brendon actually squeals, diving for the edge of the couch and going ass-up in the air. Ryan snatches the US Weekly from Jon’s hands and sits back down with it held in front of his face. Jon can’t help it, he starts laughing. It’ll probably seal his fate, but whatever.  
  
Spencer appears in the doorway looking rumpled and puffy-eyed. “What.”  
  
“Sorry, I didn’t know you were asleep,” Jon says when no one else speaks. Spencer stares at him. Jon stares back. His mouth wants to move on its own, but he somehow keeps from babbling. “We’re going to Amsterdam. Ryan says you’ve never been high.”  
  
Spencer purses his lips together tightly, but does not unhinge his jaw and devour Jon’s head. Instead he looks past and says, “Brendon, what the hell?”  
  
Half of Brendon’s body is wedged behind the back cushions and his legs kick straight up at the air. “Hi,” he replies, muffled. “Oh, hey, there’s my guitar pick! Like, twenty of them!”  
  
“You’re going to catch Ebola back there,” Ryan informs him.  
  
"Fuck you!" Brendon’s legs flail around, almost clocking Jon in the head. His pants are low-cut and his shirt falls up to reveal striped pink and red underwear and a lot of fish-pale belly. Jon turns around just in time to catch Spencer looking away, his expression twisting sharply. From the couch Ryan’s pilfered magazine rustles as he turns a page.  
  
“So it’s true?” Jon inquires with an effort. “You’ve _never_ smoked up?”  
  
Spencer shrugs, his eyes rising from the floor to meet Jon’s. “When? We started touring before I even finished high school.”  
  
“Exactly – _touring_. How have you never smoked up on tour with a bonafide rock band?” Jon smiles at him fondly. “You’re an odd duck, Smith.”  
  
“Okay, yeah, no. When the rest of your band are also a bunch of kids – ”  
  
“Hey,” Ryan interjects, but yeah, right. Jon’s caught sight of an old stuffed bear in Ryan’s bunk more than once, though he has the good sense not to mention it in conversation.  
  
“ – then clearly _some_ one has to stay sober enough to give a physical description to the police.”  
  
Jon flops back on the couch and laughs at the ceiling. It’s kind of adorable how much of a pessimist Spencer is, even more so than Ryan – but then again, maybe that’s not all that surprising. Spencer prepares for the worst and takes the best when it comes along; Ryan dreams of the moon in his hands and reads disappointment between his empty fingers.  
  
“The time has come,” Brendon announces, interrupting Jon’s thoughts. He flops back down on the couch, his hair going in all directions and his face flushed from being turned upside-down. “For you to put aside adult things and indulge your inner child, Spencer Smith. You can’t repress these things forever! That’s what makes guys in their forties buy Corvettes and girlfriends named Barbie. Don’t be that guy, Spencer Smith.”  
  
“Yeah,” Ryan says, just as Spencer murmurs, “Barbie?”  
  
Jon sits up and puts on his gentle-but-stern face. It always works on his cats. “Spence, we’ve got, like, trained professionals who can give our descriptions to the police now. We’ve got _Zack_. Do you doubt the power of Zack?”  
  
“Hallelujah!” Brendon chirps, flinging his hands up in the air like a Southern congregant. Ryan snorts, his lips quirking.  
  
“So,” Jon concludes, “it’s time we took you out on the town, young one. And it’s _Amsterdam_ , you’re gonna lose your pot cherry in style.”  
  
“Fine, fine, but if we wind up being sold into the sex slave trade, I’m blaming all of you.” Spencer pauses then frowns. “Also. My _pot cherry_?”  
  
Brendon bounces. He has dust in his hair. “We should find a hookah bar. I’ll bet Zack can find us a hookah bar.”  
  
“Yeah, we should,” Ryan says, then adds, “like, all four of us.” As if that needed clarifying.  
  
Spencer looks at Ryan then back at Brendon. “Okay, fine. Sure.”  
  
Jon pushes back against the couch, his stomach cramping with sympathetic tension. It’s like watching magicians juggle with hummingbird eggs; he’s always dreading the sound of a crack.  
  
-o-  
  
 _October 18, 2006_  
  
Brendon and Ryan wind up pestering Zack for the address of a semi-reputable hookah bar then “giving him the slip,” as Ryan puts it, and stealing Spencer and Jon away into the city for some unsupervised adventures.  
  
The bar’s actually pretty nice, full of low tables and couches with a variety of cushions that even look like they’ve been washed recently. Weird ornaments dangle from the ceiling and the walls are painted with a dreamy underwater scene, big swirls of blue and trails of seaweed, spotted with bright fish. There are a couple of groups already circled around their own hookahs, but no one that seems like they’d be a fan. Jon’s not sure if the others notice Zack sitting in the corner so he just smiles and waves down low near his hip. Zack jerks his chin back and returns to reading his book on Taoism.  
  
Brendon and Ryan lead the way into the bar – though leading is a very loose definition. Mostly Brendon pokes at Ryan’s arms until Ryan hisses like a goose and pushes Brendon into a table. The legs squeak loudly against the floor and Jon winces; Brendon, though, appears completely unfazed. “Tell ‘em a hookah–smoking caterpillar has given you a call, call Alice,” he sings, swaying his hips and arms around like a belly dancer, if a belly dancer had tragic nerve damage. Ryan stomps after the bemused hostess.  
  
“It’s not too late,” Spencer says in Jon’s ear. “We could sell them into the white slave trade.”  
  
Jon laughs, bumping into Spencer’s shoulder in mock imitation of Brendon.  
  
They have a flavored non-cannabis hookah first, just so Spencer can practice using the pipe. He makes faces after every drag, but that probably has more to do with the fact that Ryan had decided ‘Lilac’ would be an awesome flavor to try. Apparently he still thinks so: “It tastes like a garden.”  
  
Brendon sits back. “Ryan Ross, ladies and gentlemen. Not even high.” He applauds like a gentleman at an art gallery, beating the tips of his fingers against his palm.  
  
“You wanted to get _bubblegum_ ,” Ryan points out heavily.  
  
Brendon makes a face at him. Ryan glares back. After a while it gets pretty creepy. Jon hasn’t done an extensive study, but he’s pretty sure that Ryan doesn’t blink as often as normal people. Brendon makes another face. More staring. Jon doesn’t know whether to laugh or try to diffuse the situation. It’s hard to tell if there even is a situation. They’ve always been so competitive: 90% of their stage act is this ridiculous push-pull game of chicken, both of them toeing the line and daring the other one to blink, only to collapse into cuddles a moment later. When he’d first met them on Truckstops, Jon had been pretty convinced that they were going to tear each other’s throats out before the last show. Sometimes he still wonders how their rivalry stops just this side of friendly.  
  
“Boys, boys,” Spencer says, “stoppit, you’re both pretty and make terrible decisions.”  
  
Jon smiles, reminded. “I think we promised you a high, Spencer Smith.”  
  
They switch to the real stuff and it’s slightly anti-climactic: Spencer totally doesn’t jump on the tabletop or spout idiotic philosophy or anything. He’s so reserved, Jon had been hoping for some fireworks. Clearly he’s not the only one; Brendon and Ryan eyeball him close. After a few drags Spencer starts shooting hairy looks back at all of them. “What, oh my god. Do you want me to start speaking in tongues?”  
  
“Je suis déçu,” Ryan says.  
  
“Me duele la cabeza!” Brendon cries.  
  
“Ass-pay e-thay ong-bay,” Jon says, smooth with years of college practice.  
  
In the corner, Zack snorts loudly.  
  
“You’re supposed to write poetry,” Ryan pouts at Spencer. “About, like, dragons.”  
  
“That’s your job,” Spencer huffs back in a cloud of white smoke. “I just play the drums, man, I seem to recall very specifically making you the poetry guy.”  
  
“Anyway, you don’t have a – a fucking _toe_ to stand on,” Brendon pipes up, waggling his finger in Ryan’s direction. He’s slumped down in his chair, butt pushed all the way to the edge. “You don’t write poetry when you’re high, you just get sad and mopey.”  
  
Spencer’s hand twitches on the tabletop, but he says nothing. Ryan considers Brendon for a long moment, playing with the edge of the tablecloth. “Not every time,” he says eventually.  
  
Brendon looks back flatly, a little challenging. “Yes, every time.”  
  
“Because we’ve smoked up together so much.”  
  
“We have so! We’ve smoked up tons of times! With Brent when his mom was sick, with Bill and Tom and Jiggy and Bob and Olivia when Bill and Tom had that huge fight, that time with Pete at Thanksgiving – ”  
  
“Lalalalalalala,” Spencer says, hitting his hands against his ears. That’s his Pavlovian reaction to any mention of their time spent at Pete’s house. It’s kind of hilarious, considering how Jon knows for a fact the wildest thing they got up to that weekend was starting a fire in the microwave in abortive attempt to make s’mores.  
  
Jon giggles to himself while Ryan and Brendon engage in a half-hearted slapfest, punctuated by Brendon recalling all the times they’ve gotten high together. Spencer breathes out a plume of smoke and silently, grimly puts out a hand to steady the hookah as they flail around, kicking the table. Watching them, a wave of something warm pours over Jon, starting at his knees and flowing out through every cuticle in his scalp. He smiles stupidly at them all, his _band_. They’re such idiots. A ship of fools, a band of idiots.  
  
“How’s Tom, by the way?” Spencer asks Jon, bringing a quick end to his happy thoughts.  
  
“He’s…they’re gonna announce it officially. Soon. In, like, a week?”  
  
Spencer makes a face. “Shit.”  
  
“Yeah.” Jon had spent most of September on the phone and too far away to do anything worth a damn. Not that there had been all that much to do. Still, Jon can’t think about it too much or he’ll get himself all worked up for nothing, like a wind-up toy running into the sides of a cardboard box over and over again. _What will happen will happen_ , he thinks. He can only really, really hope that someday Tom will feel the same way.  
  
He clears his throat and nudges Ryan. “Bogart.”  
  
“Ryan just likes sucking on things,” Brendon snarks. Then, “Ow, ow!”  
  
Hours later they tumble out of the bar all akimbo, limbs in weird directions. Ryan immediately starts to wander off and Spencer has to catch him, bring him back. Task complete, he steps back and puts his hands inside the pockets of his jacket. “Where to now?” he asks Jon, arching one eyebrow.  
  
“You’re bitchy when you’re high, Spencer Smith,” Jon says, wincing a little at the lisp. “Someone choose the way.”  
  
They do this sometimes, in cities where none of them know the way: choose a random direction and walk until they come to a crossroads, then spin the wheel again. It’s sort of an asshole thing to do to Zack – who’s currently lurking in the shadows outside the bar’s door – but Jon loves it too much to give up except in places where Panic! is too well known to avoid the mob. He loves getting past the main streets that lead to stadiums and venues into the places where people actually live and go to work, where jack-o-lanterns sit on the porches and strange flags hang from apartment windows and a whole layered history of graffiti coats the underside of bridges. He takes pictures, ones that he rarely shares with anyone else. Landmarks mean nothing to someone who never takes the journey.  
  
Ryan points the way downhill, the direction that he’d tried to wander earlier. Spencer snorts faintly and off they go.  
  
“You don’t have your camera,” Ryan observes.  
  
“Yeah, I forgot it.” Jon shrugs. “Don’t do anything spectacular, okay?”  
  
Brendon waves his hands in the air, half snake-windy and half bird-wingy-flutters. Maybe bats. “Are you kidding, Jonathan Jacob Walker? Every moment of life is something spectacular. Oo, oo, hey, baby, take a walk on the wild side,” he sings at a baby-faced busker on the sidewalk. The kid gives him a cool onceover that doesn’t hide his interest at all.  
  
“Hey,” Spencer says then doesn’t say anything else. It’s not the silence of someone who’s just naturally stopped talking, though: it’s a dead space into which all sound plummets as they plod onward. He forgot, Jon realizes, for a second Spencer forgot he and Brendon weren’t together anymore.  
  
He looks sideways at Ryan, who is messing with his phone and doesn’t seem to have noticed anything. It’s hard to tell with Ryan, though. It’s hard to tell with all three of them, separately and in pairs and all together. They’re so young, but sometimes they make Jon feel like an infant.  
  
“Boys and girls of every age, wouldn’t you like to see something strange?” Brendon sings, doing some kind of spooky jazz hands. They pass by some kind of Halloween display and he is bright in the orange light.  
  
Ryan joins him on the chorus without looking away from his phone. “When does that drop?” he asks when the chorus ends and Brendon goes on in the low, growling voice of the Creature Under the Bed.  
  
“Next Thursday,” Spencer supplies. He has his hands stuffed in his pockets again, his shoulders slumped a little. Jon thinks suddenly of that night, with Brendon, but he doesn’t think Spencer would be quite so accepting of comfort. Besides, there are two other people here who want to make the reach, and they’re keeping their hands to themselves. So does Jon.  
  
“Life’s no fun without a good scare,” Brendon croons then adds in a normal voice, “You guys suck, you’re not dancing. We should find some hookers, I’ll bet they’ll dance with me.”  
  
Jon laughs and obligingly shimmies his hips a little bit. He dances like an old man and he knows it, but it gets Spencer to laugh and Ryan to smile. They walk on with the mood curling around their knees like a resentful cat, bumping in reminder. “Where now?” Ryan asks when they come to a crossroads.  
  
Spencer points to the left. It’s a street full of light: there’s some kind of illuminated art installation that sends Ryan tipping forward, like an over-eager baby crane lurching out of the mud. There’s so much light, Jon has to squint against it and he hangs back, trying to take in the whole thing. It’s all multi-colored and spinning out of a central thing, moving over their faces.  
  
“The walls,” Spencer says, “look at the walls.”  
  
Jon looks up and then at the ground and then at the buildings around them. There are _words_ on the buildings, words written in light – they move in a slow, dizzying circle. They’re projected, Jon realizes with an effort. The light projects words outward onto the buildings, rotating them across the different surfaces. They run like liquid.  
  
“Light like liquid,” he says aloud. He lifts his hands and gasps: there are words of light on his hands. He’s part of it. He’s part of everything. “That’s fucking – that’s – wow.”  
  
No one is listening. Ryan has moved up close to stare at the light source and Brendon is doing this weird sideways run, trying to move with the words and keep just one on him. He’s staggering, tripping, gonna run into a post soon. Somebody calls after him in warning; Spencer’s just about between them, outlined against the light. They’re all a bunch of dark blobs. Jon stares at them.  
  
“No one touches anyone,” he says aloud, to himself. “No one touches anymore.” His throat feels rough, like he can’t possibly get enough oxygen through there. It’s such a small tube anyway, the tra – the trae – the breathing tube. So fragile. So easy to break. Jon swallows and swallows again. His eyes prickle.  
  
“I’m stooooooned,” Brendon sings on a high C, bright and wavering with vibrato in the cold night air like a visible shiver. Heh, high C. Yeah. Jon shakes himself and goes to reunite with his blobs.

  
-o-

 _November 10, 2006_  
  
“The problem,” Tom says into the bar’s sticky surface, “is that they’re all being so stupid about it.”  
  
Jon takes a shallow sip of beer and waits for Tom to clarify exactly who he means. There are a few possibilities: Bill and Mike and Butcher, who had made as big a mess of it as Tom; Spencer and Ryan and Brendon, who have just about worn out their dancing shoes trying to avoid a similar mess; Tom’s parents, who aren’t being too subtle about their desire for him to move in with one of them or maybe his uncle in New York, just for a little while, honey, we’re worried; or the state of North Carolina, which doesn't allow anyone to serve alcohol after 2 am. They've got about another...seventeen minutes.  
  
“I mean, shit, they never hearda threesomes?” Tom straightens, rubbing at his nose where he’s had it smooshed against the bar; the area around his nose ring looks reddened. Well, that eliminates the state of North Carolina and Tom’s parents, who Jon is pretty sure haven’t had sex since, well, Tom, and hopefully also eliminates Bill and Mike and Butcher. If not, then all the rumors are true and Decaydance is the single gayest label in the world. Pete would be so proud.  
  
“I don’t think Brendon and Ryan are into each other like that,” Jon hazards a guess.  
  
Tom pulls a face. “That’s stupid. They makeout onstage all the time. Why can’t they just, like, move it fifty feet into a bathroom stall?”  
  
“Classy.” It’s a fair question, though, and it makes Jon sigh, rubbing a hand over his face. Brendon’s spider-monkey tendencies have returned with enough force that Jon had thought, maybe, maybe. But all the invisible barriers between them haven’t fallen, they’ve only shifted. There are still all these unspoken rules which dictate _this_ kind of kissing is okay, but _that_ kind isn’t, and _this_ kind of touching is okay, but _that_ kind isn’t. _This_ kind of kissing and touching happens out in the open, where it’s all part of the show, kids.  
  
Spencer has taken to silently curling up next to Jon, Tom, Cassie whenever she visits, Zack, Katie, Amanda, and anyone else who will just as silently sling an arm around his shoulders or hold his hand. Because usually, _that_ kind of touching, the not-okay kind, is the kind that has anything to do with Spencer. He’d never admit it of course, too proud, but even those outside the know can tell the guy is getting pretty starved for affection.  
  
“It’s like,” Jon says aloud, rubbing his face again. “They’re always…butting heads.”  
  
“Heheh,” Tom snickers.  
  
“Shut up. Brendon and Ryan, they’re always, like…it’s always a competition. Who can dress the craziest, who does Pete love best, who can do the gayest shit onstage.”  
  
“I thought they’d stopped fighting over him?”  
  
“They were never fighting over him, that’s the problem.” Jon finishes the rest of his beer and signals for another one. “It was more like…a game of chicken, which one of them was going to admit they wanted him.”  
  
“That’s fucked up,” Tom says.  
  
“Yes,” Jon answers heavily. “Yes, it is.”  
  
It might actually be simpler if Brendon and Ryan _were_ having catfights over Spencer: the solution would be nasty but quick. Spencer could choose somebody and somebody else could have a totally broken heart and it might break up the band, but at least it’d be over and done with.  
  
It’d be cleaner than the option they’d chosen, anyway, but if Jon’s learned anything about his bandmates in the past seven months, it’s that they don’t do simple. Ryan and Brendon are still playing chicken. They’ve just shifted the stakes: now they’re waiting to see which one of them will hurt the other one first.  
  
“Seriously, though,” Tom insists, swigging and getting only half in his mouth. “They’re being a bunch – a buncha gay-ass morons about this – ”  
  
“Would you _stop_ saying ‘gay’ all the time,” Jon snaps then recovers, shrugs. “Don’t make me quote Pete’s song titles at you.”  
  
Tom rolls his eyes. “Okay, right there I meant them being _actually_ gay-ass, Jonny. Jeez, don’t get so defensive about your Mormon morons – ”  
  
“They’re my _band_. What, did you forget how that feels or something?”  
  
Tom freezes with his bottle half-raised to his mouth. He looks at Jon over the lip, glassy eyes sharpening. “What’s that mean?”  
  
“Just – what the fuck, did you write off the whole thing for good?” There’s a little pause that wavers and then Jon sighs. His head aches, swimming around the temples. “I’m sorry. Sorry, dude, that was shitty. It’s just – they’re my guys, you know?”  
  
The funny thing about Tom is that he can hold a grudge forever – obviously, from the complete radio silence between him and everyone who’s ever had anything to do with The Academy – but if you get to him fast enough and make him really, really believe that you’re sorry, he’ll forgive anything. Already the pinched scowl is easing off his face. He shrugs. “So. Fix ‘em, if they’re your guys.”  
  
“I don’t know _how_.” Shit, Jon shouldn’t be whining about this. He’s not the one flirting with heartbreak. There’s no way to stop now, though: at some point in the last few months, Brendon and Ryan and Spencer _have_ become his guys, and part of Jon’s internal wiring is that he wants to help and protect and, yeah, _fix_ his people.  
  
"Well look, okay -- look." Tom frowns at the bar. "What's the problem again?"  
  
"Forget it, man, it's okay. C'mon, let's get you back to -- "  
  
"No, seriously, stop -- leggo, shut up, I'm not actually that drunk." Tom resettles in his seat, pushes their drinks aside, drags a napkin from the holder and wipes down the bar in front of him then sets his hands palms-up on its top. "I'm serious. Lay it on me, dude, what's their deal?"  
  
Jon shoots a glance around and leans in. "Dude. It's the oldest story in the world."  
  
"There's a snake involved?" Tom sniggers, flapping his hands at Jon's exasperated huff. "Sorry, sorry. Okay. So Brendon likes Spencer. And Ryan likes Spencer. Who does Spencer like?"  
  
"As far as I can tell, both of them." That's another curve ball on the whole situation: even if Brendon and Ryan veered back to the almost-catfighting they got to in the summer, Jon's not sure Spencer _could_ actually make a choice between them.  
  
Jon's had a front-row seat. He's seen them all together, bending sideways to accommodate each other, and being so, so careful in their separate pairs -- careful not to claim too much of Spencer's time. He's seen the quick, quiet look that Spencer sends Brendon when he tells an interviewer that yep, he's still swinging single; he's also seen the way that Brendon's jiggly knee slows down after Spencer replies to the same question with a steady "No comment."  
  
He's seen Ryan's shoulders hitch in tight, the kind of sharp peaks that no unwary traveler would want to brave. Jon's found himself change from a place of exile to the only safe ground in the band. There have been a lot of late-night conversations and he's always known that Ryan has awful things in his head. Brendon just plasters himself to Jon's side at regular intervals and picks fights with some of the techs, but, well, Jon had never realized how much of Ryan's anger and grief and insecurities got filtered through Spencer first. Ryan unplugged is enough to give _Jon_ nightmares, unsettling dreams about mazes and lonely stones getting eaten away by time; maybe Ryan's grief has cranked things up a few notches, or maybe he was always this way. Jon can't imagine how.  
  
"Okay. So. But Brendon doesn't like Ryan and Ryan doesn't like Brendon."  
  
"Not _like-_ like."  
  
"Not _like_ -like." Tom frowns thoughtfully. "Then what's the problem? Why can't Spencer choose both of them?"  
  
Jon sets his jaw on his hand, holding back the sigh except in his mind. "Because they've never heard of threesomes, remember?"  
  
"Not a threesome -- oh, oh, oh." Tom makes a face like sour milk and waves his hands around, knocking over a bottle. Jon rights it quickly. "Bad mental image, baaaaaaad. Hey, get away from my drink. Not a threesome, but, like, just dating both of them. Separately. They like each other, right? And they're Mormons. Mormons believe in having tons of wives."  
  
"I...think only Brendon's Mormon. And not really anymore."  
  
"Really? 'Cause Spencer James Smith the fifth sounds really Mormon, dude. And friends don't let friends not date the guy they _do_ like _-_ like." He pauses, obviously working through that statement in his own mind.  
  
Jon lets him think, taking the opportunity to slug down a mouthful himself. That'd be a disaster of epic proportions. Besides the potential of a legendary band breakup -- which, what the fuck ever, at this point Jon could care less as long as they were all happy -- he's pretty sure that Brendon and Ryan would lose their fucking minds. They've spent most of the last five years locked in this unspoken struggle; Jon would never say it aloud to anyone, not even Tom, but he's pretty sure that Brendon's interest in Spencer had a lot more to do with _Ryan_ at the beginning. It's changed, obviously, just like Ryan's -- maybe lifelong -- thing for Spencer has gone from vague attraction to sharp need. Poking a hole in that tension would be, well --  
  
Jon frowns, blowing little gusts of air over the lip of his bottle and making musical notes. He sips a bit more, pushing the pitch lower. It'd _probably_ be a disaster. There'd be jealousy and uncertainty and double the chances of it winding up in _People_.  
  
Of course, excepting that last one, that's pretty much the status quo.  
  
"Huh," Jon says.  
  
"See." Tom knows him too well, and points a triumphant finger at his face. "It can't get a whole lot worse than it already is. I'm right. You know I'm right."  
  
"You _...might_ be right," Jon allows.  
  
"I totally am. See, there's your fix right there. Go git 'em, tiger."  
  
The bartender is starting to get his glare on, so Jon swigs down his beer quickly. "Maybe. C'mon, let's get outta here, man."  
  
"What? No way, we've got, like -- "  
  
"Five minutes."  
  
"Five minutes! Barkeep! Another round!"  
  
"Whoa, no, count me out."  
  
Tom pouts. "Well, lemme finish this one and I'll be right behind you. Heheh, _right behind_ you." He sniggers into his beer and waggles his eyebrows suggestively.  
  
Jon rolls his eyes but ruffles Tom's hair fondly. "I'll go call us a cab or something."  
  
He’s almost to the door when Tom slams his empty bottle down and sways to his feet, bellowing after Jon, “There! Now c'mon, Jonny! Let's go save your gay-ass Mormons! Fuck yeah,” accompanied by _hunh-hunh-hunh_ and a raised fist of…fag-stag solidarity, or something.  
  
Jon pauses near the exit of the bar, staring back. “Do you mind,” he calls after a moment, “not yelling that at me across a bar in North Carolina?”  
  
Tom stops in mid-stagger, blinks, and looks at the turning heads around them. There are quite a few. “Anybody wanna _start_ somethin’?” Tom bristles.  
  
Jon whips out his cell phone. “Zack, hey – I think you might need to come help me save Tom from a lynch mob.”  
  
“What,” Zack says, “again?”  
  
-o-  
  
 _November 11, 2006_  
  
Brendon's not really an option; he's loosened up in recent years, but the guy _was_ raised Mormon. Despite Tom's points about polygamy -- polyandry? -- Jon doubts that it'd be helpful to approach Brendon with _hey, hi, so I think you need to explore alternative relationships_. Spencer's the obvious choice, but Jon doesn't really have an opening there. He's been in this band for six months, but Spencer James Smith is a tough nut to crack and Jon still feels like an outsider with him. They've definitely never talked about this.  
  
Ryan Ross, though...Ryan Ross convinced Pete to fly down to Las Vegas solely through the power of Livejournal. If anyone can bring about this...compromise, it's going to be him.  
  
It's not something one casually works into a conversation. Jon doesn't even try. He finds Ryan alone at a rest stop, sitting at an ancient picnic table with his notebook spread out in front of him. Jon perches on the bench across from him; there are probably whole colonies of spiders and chewed gum on the underside of the table, but he chooses not to think about that too hard. Ryan glances up, his eyes sort of glassy, and Jon smiles in greeting.  
  
They sit for a while in silence. Ryan tends to go way deep inside of himself when he's writing; he loses track of time and he doesn't always realize that someone talking to him, but he's said that it helps to have another person around. Sort of, a face to come back to. Brendon usually doesn't have the patience to sit still that long and Spencer is semi-off-limits according to their mutual rules, so that leaves Jon. Or Zack or Katie, but usually Jon.  
  
They've got an hour a the rest stop, and Jon hopes that'll be enough time. Sitting there, though, watching the techs throw around a Frisbee in the cold light while Zack and Eric and Laura huddle with cups of coffee from the vendor across the street, Jon has a hard time imagining that there's any kind of deadline. That anyone could be hurt by being in love. He closes his eyes, trying to hold onto that feeling. The air is cool with a tinge of winter, and he breathes it in slowly.  
  
When he opens them up again, Ryan is watching. "Hey," Jon greets.  
  
"What was that?" Ryan asks sharply. He's always is, when he first comes back to himself.  
  
"Just, y'know." Jon waves a hand that takes in everything. Tom jogging to pick up the Frisbee then tossing it with sudden laser-eyed accuracy, the mist above coffee cups, the whole of Jon's life up to this point and, hopefully, afterwards. "It's pretty neat."  
  
Ryan obediently looks around. Jon watches him in turn, wondering what he sees. They're about as different as two people can get, he knows. That's okay.  
  
"It can be okay," he says, not really thinking about it.  
  
Ryan's eyes snap to his, wide. "What?"  
  
Jon hesitates, uncertain at the reaction, then repeats. "It can be okay? I mean, everything. It'll be okay."  
  
Ryan stares at him with his lips parted. "Spencer said something like that," he finally says.  
  
"When?"  
  
For a long moment he doesn't think Ryan will answer, but then: "In Vegas."  
  
It's not hard to figure out what he means, even though it's the most that anyone's ever said about that weekend to Jon, when Ryan and Spencer went to bury Ryan's dad and came back wound together in a new way. It had almost broken Brendon into pieces. Jon still can't blame him: the only thing Brendon had ever done wrong was show up eleven years late.  
  
Jon puts his hands on the table, folded together, and tries to keep his expression totally open and unjudging. "Did you believe him?"  
  
Ryan looked down at the words scrawled in his notebook. "I believed that he meant it."  
  
"But you think he was wrong?" Ryan shoots him a look that clearly tells Jon he's pushing it; Jon thinks _kid, you have no idea_.  
  
He backs off a bit, putting one fist atop of the other on the table and resting his chin on his knuckles, like a miniature totem pole. "How goes it?"  
  
"Slow." Ryan taps his pen against the page then closes the notebook with a sudden motion.  
  
"Any way I can help?"  
  
"No." Ryan looks away, over the damp grass. His shoulders are tight. "No."  
  
They sit in silence. Jon's back starts to ache but he doesn't move. Ryan's short exhalations make small clouds in front of his mouth. He closes his eyes and takes a slow, deeper breath. It looks like a smoke trail. His hoodie can't be warm enough. Jon still doesn't move.  
  
"You want some coffee?" he offers finally. He hopes that was enough time; it's not like he could get away with carrying a stopwatch around with him to time Ryan's recovery, so it's always a guessing game.  
  
"I'd settle for you keeping Brendon away from any and all sources of caffeine," Ryan tells him, his mouth quirking wryly.  
  
There's an opening. Jon hesitates, because fuck, they brought him on five months ago to play music that he had no part in writing. Quickly he tucks that thought away and says, "I'm kinda worried about Bren, actually."  
  
Ryan looks up sharply. "What? Why?"  
  
Jon shrugs, still not moving from his totem-pole position. No sudden movements. "He doesn't seem happy."  
  
The expression on Ryan's face flattens a little, though not as much as he'd probably like. "Why?"  
  
"He just doesn't."  
  
Ryan sits back and crossed his arms; his face clearly tells Jon that he isn't fooling anyone. "What do you want me to do about it? He's a big boy, he can make his own decisions."  
  
He's pretty close to snapping shut, so Jon takes a wild leap and says, "Spencer doesn't seem happy, either."  
  
That changes Ryan's expression in a hurry. Jon can see it tear at him, all the insecurities pooling up from underneath, and quickly murmurs, "Hey, hey. Ryan."  
  
They stare at each other. Ryan's breath has gone short again. It maybe wasn't a great idea to come at him with this, right now...but then again, maybe there wasn't any other way. Jon still feels like a prick. Ryan's already tried the only thing he knew and it hadn't fixed a damn thing, not really. It doesn't take a rocket scientist -- or Spencer -- to know that Ryan would see it as his own failure.  
  
Ryan's dad has been dead for three months and three weeks, and he's done his best to give up the one person who could help him through that. He might not _like_ -like Brendon, maybe doesn't even like him all that much...but if that isn't love, Jon doesn't know what is.  
  
"Are you happy?" he asks softly.  
  
"What do you want me to do about it?" Ryan asks again, lost. His fingers are curled tight around the edges of the notebook.  
  
Jon slowly straightens -- ow, ow, his back -- and puts his palms flat down on the picnic table's dirty top. It's been sitting here for years in all sorts of weather and he can practically feel the layers underneath his hands. "Maybe it doesn't have to be a decision," he says, and stands up. It's not, _hey, hi, you need to explore alternative relationships_ , but Jon's pretty sure that you can't say something like that to Ryan Ross. The best you can do is make vague statements and hope he works it out for himself.  
  
He walks slowly back towards the bus, shoving his cold hands into his pockets. The Frisbee game has devolved into Tom using the techs as willing targets; he shouts instructions to them, laughing, and they scramble to chase down his arcing throws. Jon pauses to watch it soar through the air, spinning, before hands snatch it out of the sky.  
  
-o-  
  
That night, as they're waiting to go on, Jon finds himself standing at Spencer's shoulder. Out on stage, Brendon and Ryan are picking up their instruments, moving with practiced calm. The lights make them glow. Spencer watches them, twirling a drumstick in one hand, his fingers in constant motion.  
  
There's this brief moment where suddenly Ryan breaks motion and turns toward them. Half of his face is neon in the stage lights, but the other half is still shadowed, like a crescent moon in the sky. It's too far to read his expression; between them, Brendon is focused on the crowd and doesn't see whatever's going on behind him. The drumstick in Spencer's hand stills. Jon holds his breath.  
  
Then Eric gets into position and then they've got to move, too, Spencer tucking behind his kit and Jon moving up to Brendon's side. On the far side of the stage, Ryan pulls his guitar strap over his head and sets his shoulders. He moves up to flank Brendon, too.  
  
Spencer counts them in.  
  
The crowd roars.

-o-

 _December 7, 2006_  
  
They pass through Vegas on the third-to-last show of the tour. It makes sense, but it still feels like they’re returning to the scene of the crime.  
  
Everyone's got that holiday itch, making long-distance plans on where to go, how to get there, if they've got relatives in the area who wouldn't mind an extra mouth at the table. Spencer spends the week making complicated plans to ensure that Ryan and Brendon have both. One of his little sisters is pushing for a Mexican getaway after their last show down south, and Spencer strides up and down through the bunks with his cell phone, expressing mild disagreement with this idea.  
  
"Over my dead _body_!" he snaps at one point. "I don't care if they've got -- _no_. You're not even _legal_ to drink, let alone _tequila_! We are having a goddamned family Christmas at our own goddamned house and you're gonna _like it_."  
  
Brendon plinks out "Joy to the World" on the ukelele that Amanda gave him (to everyone else's dismay). "Twenty says he brings up the time she stole his Teenaged Mutant Ninja Turtles."  
  
Ryan doesn't look up from his book. "You're on."  
  
They're sprawled in the front lounge: Jon on one couch and Tom asleep with his head on Jon's ("smelly-ass") feet, Ryan quietly reading, and Brendon sprawled out across the tabletop with his head tilted toward Ryan. For the last two hours he's been pestering Ryan for attention while Spencer's preoccupied. Laura's playing solitaire in the tiny corner of the table not covered by Brendon. Wei-Yin, the new, teensy guitar tech, scurries past into the kitchen, cackling and carrying what looks like a penis-shaped lollipop. Sometimes Jon wonders why people need go anywhere else, why they can't just be happy with this. Then he thinks of Cassie and aches to be in flight, too.  
  
After another twenty minutes of cutthroat negotiations, Spencer gets the holiday plans squared away and stomps into the lounge. Ryan immediately puts a hand out in Brendon's direction without even looking up from his book. "Spencer!" Brendon yelps in dismay. "Why didn't you play the Turtles card?"  
  
"He wasn't talking to Jackie," Ryan says, his lips curling. "Crystal's the one who likes tequila. Pay up."  
  
"Cheater!"  
  
"I'll settle for the ukelele."  
  
"Never," Brendon cries, and bursts into a flurry of chords. "You'll never take me alive, you'll never take me alive, do what it takes to survive!"  
  
Ryan snaps his book shut with an annoyed huff and bounces out of his seat, heading back through the bunks. He's always got a short fuse before a show. Spencer freezes in a half-crouch, about to sit down, and hauls himself back up with an eyeroll. He heads after Ryan.  
  
Jon bounces his ankle until Tom makes a disgruntled noise. "You're coming to my place for Christmas, right?"  
  
"'Course," Tom slurs and goes right back to sleep. He's drooling on Jon's sock. Jon lets it ride for a bit longer then shakes him lose. Tom rolls off onto the seat, his head at a funny angle and his mouth open.  
  
It draws Brendon's attention. He has a sixth sense for things like switched shampoo bottles, booby-trapped music stands, and unaware mouths. He and Jon consider the situation with gravity. "Spoon?" Jon suggests.  
  
"Clichė," Brendon tches. His fingers deftly pluck out the start of _Canon in D_ as he considers their options. "Lollipop?"  
  
Jon brightens. "Oh man."  
  
Brendon's already up in a bright flash of teeth, swaying with the bus as he heads into the kitchen to negotiate with Wei-Yin. Scooting along the seat, Jon heads to the bunks for his camera. Pranks, like new cities, need documentation. It's near the end of the tour and his SIM cards are all almost full; the bunks smell like ass; everyone's shoulders and backs and hips are fucked to hell. They're past the irrational irritation stage and the cabin fever and have settled into a dull kind of madness, where everyone knows they're crazy but acknowledges that there's nothing any of them can do to change at this point. Jon loves this part of a tour. It's sort of like _Lord of the Flies_ on a bus, with less killing. (Usually.)  
  
Legs dangle out of bunks as Jon passes, but he can plainly see Ryan and Spencer in that little corner by the back lounge. They're standing with their shoulders angled into each other, the edge of their hips touching; Ryan's doing that thing where he relaxes into Spencer's bodyspace, not touching but sort of hovering close. He gets like that, before shows. The fact that he's doing it on the bus, hours and hours before he has to be on, is a little worrisome. Vegas is two shows ahead of them, though. Spencer's family is attending the show en masse and filling out the comp tickets for Ryan and Brendon, too, but there's plenty of opportunity for bad memories to slip through the cracks.  
  
Spencer reaches out and touches Ryan's pointy elbow lightly, slides his hand down to catch his fingers. It can't possibly look like anything but what it is, but they're all to that point now where it doesn't really matter. Jon smiles to himself as he turns away and flips open his camera case.  
  
-o-  
  
The show is fucking fantastic. There are some technical problems, but whatever, the _feel_ of it is there and that's what counts. Lights and sound effects and fog machines get all the glory sometimes, but there's got to be a beating heart underneath or it all gets mechanical and they might as well be robots and drum machines up on the stage. Brendon's having one of his electric nights where he's singing with every molecule, his voice echoing between his bones. He goes around to all of them in turn, circling Ryan like a hungry animal and clinging to Jon's back during the drum breakdown for _Lying_. They're around the same height, so Jon barely has to move to let Brendon hook a chin over his shoulder and hang there, vibrating with energy like a parrot on coke. The thought makes Jon laugh, but the roar around them take the sound of his voice away into the air. He lets it go. When Brendon leaves him, he looks across to Ryan. There's color smeared all over Ryan's face but it's slightly blurred into his skin -- less like a mask and more like warpaint. He smiles back at Jon, a rare, happy grin.  
  
-o-  
  
Something like that doesn't get turned off right away. After the show Brendon is still vibrating right on the uncomfortable edge of too much; Jon does what he can, lets Brendon tackle him to the dressing room floor, but they're all sharing in the effects.  
  
Finally Ryan yells, "Oh my god, seriously, _Spencer_." It's slightly muffled; he'd made the grave mistake of sitting down on the couch to text Pete, and Brendon had immediately scrambled halfway into his lap.  
  
"Fuck, fine, sorry," Brendon snaps, pushing away and standing up. He wavers there for a second, a homing missile seeking a new target, when Spencer reappears from the mess of half-clothed bodies around them, catches Brendon around the waist with both arms, and drops down onto the couch beside Ryan, effectively using his own weight to drag Brendon down into his lap. The couch knocks against the back wall, shaking it enough that a few mysterious somethings crash down. Spencer pulls a guilty face but Brendon barely seems to notice, hugging Spencer's arms to him with thinly-disguised relief. Ryan looks pretty relieved, too.  
  
Jon suddenly, sharply misses his own person. He calls Cassie before he even towels the sweat out of his hair. She busts up laughing right away; he's still breathing hard enough that she thought he was a prank pervert when she first picked up.  
  
"Miss you, miss you, miss you," he tells her softly, once she's stopped laughing and he's stopped gasping for breath. He's leaning against a wall just down the corridor from the dressing room. He tucks the phone against his ear and winds both of his hands tightly together. "I'm holding my hand."  
  
The phone rattles as she shifts, then murmurs, "I'm holding mine."  
  
Jon closes his eyes and runs a thumb back and forth across his own wrist. It still works, somehow -- after all this time on the road, he can still feel close to her this way. He's been around enough long-distance relationships to know that it shouldn't; it should have fallen apart years ago, in 504 Plan or when he was always off teching for The Academy. It hasn't, though. It shouldn't work, but it does. He smiles.  
  
After a moment Cassie says, "If you jerk off with that hand tonight, it'll be me."  
  
The smile stretches across Jon's face, twitching. "I love you."  
  
"Oh, yeah, baby, you know you do."  
  
When Jon gets back into the dressing room the smell of it almost knocks him down. It's something he gets used to quickly, but the moment he steps outside into clean air, his nasal passages open up again. The re-entry is killer. He forces himself to take a few deep breaths, coughing. Tom is near the door, aiming his camera at the room. He flicks his finger just above the button, not actually taking the picture, which means that he's looking at BrendonandSpencerandRyan. Not the kind of snapshot they want anyone else to see.  
  
"Hey!" Jon greets, bumping into Tom's shoulder.  
  
"What?" Tom shouts.  
  
"What?" Jon shouts back.  
  
"What?"  
  
"What?"  
  
They grin at each other stupidly, still amused by the same old joke. Tom bumps his shoulder back, letting his camera drop down against his chest. "You call Cass?"  
  
"Yup."  
  
"I've been thinking about what you said," Tom goes on, in one of his infamous sudden subject changes. "About writing things off?"  
  
Jon twitches, surprised. "Oh, hey, man, I didn't mean -- "  
  
"No, no," Tom flaps his hand. "You were right, y'know? I've been thinking about it, and yeah." He shrugs, his gaze sliding away then dragging back to Jon. "I can be dumb. But stuff is like, percolating." He taps his temple.  
  
"Don't hurt 'cherself." Jon ducks away from Tom's swipe, laughing with relief.  
  
On the couch, Brendon sits in Spencer's lap with his head tilted back against Spencer's shoulder, his eyes closed. He looks exhausted and exultant, settling down into stillness. Spencer is gripping him hard enough that his biceps stand out; he's talking to Ryan, their heads bent close enough to touch. It's a great picture, one that tells everything that needs to be told, and Jon hopes no one ever snaps them like this.  
It's kind of a surprise, then, when they get to the hotel and Jon winds up rooming with Spencer. They'll be in Vegas tomorrow and he'd thought that Spence would want to spend time with his guys before he has to be family-respectable. He raises his eyebrows but Spencer just shrugs and says, "First shower?"  
  
"All yours." Jon sits and flips through the channels as the water cranks on. He calls his mom for an update on her neighbor's pregnant cat; they're expecting to inherit at least a couple. Jon hopes he'll get back in time to see their first week. Nothing in the world is more therapeutic than week-old kittens.  
  
He gets a text from Tom. _Time 4 stripers, need str8t guy_  
  
 _Hell no_ , Jon texts back. Cassie probably wouldn't mind all that much, but Jon has no desire to stare at naked women who would rather be anywhere else. His mom always told him he's got God's own gift of empathy.  
  
 _F u gay mormons dont care abt stripperr wast of money_  
  
Followed shortly by a message from Brendon. _BOOBS._  
  
Jon's still laughing when Spencer comes out of the shower. "Hey, man. Better get dressed in a hurry, I think Tom's dragging your boyfriends out to a strip joint."  
  
"Oh, Jesus. I'm not touching that with a sterilized pole."  
  
"What, you're just going to abandon them to Tom's clutches like that?"  
  
Spencer's silent for long enough that Jon looks up and finds him staring at the wall. He's biting at his lip. Jon blinks, asks, "Not up for it?"  
  
"No, yeah, I'll go, one of us should." Spencer tosses his towel on the floor and runs both hands through his damp hair, making it point in all directions. Other than that he doesn't move.  
  
Jon hesitates, but that gift of empathy is jangling right now. "I think they're already gone, actually. I could call them and ask which club, but -- "  
  
"Naw, screw it," Spencer says, "I'm not chasing them across half the city. They'll be fine." He goes over to other bed and starts pulling down the sheets. The pillows go flying.  
  
Jon eases his feet down onto the carpet. "You hungry? Wanna get some room service?"  
  
"What, overpriced bullshit? Nawthanks."  
  
Jon quietly puts his cell phone on silent and ignores the blink of a new message asking if they should wait. "Movie?"  
  
"Naw." Spencer flops down in the bed, instantly getting comfortable. Or maybe just too tired to care. He does look pretty beat, staring up at the ceiling. "Think I'm just going to lie here and disintegrate, thanks. You can watch something if you want."  
  
"S'okay." Jon dims the light between their beds and pops in his earbuds. Discreetly he texts Ryan a message back to go ahead without them, then turns on the new Angels and Airwaves album and dig out his laptop. He's got a whole folder of pictures to organize.  
  
He's about halfway through the album when Spencer says something. Jon quickly tugs the earbuds out and leans forward, raising his eyebrows. "What? Sorry, man, had my music on."  
  
Spencer makes a face at the ceiling. He hasn't been asleep at all, he's just been lying there. Jon cautiously pushes his laptop over onto the comforter. "You want me to turn the light off?"  
  
"No. I was..." He blinks, seems to shake himself. "Do you think this is gonna last?"  
  
"What?"  
  
"Me and Ryan and Brendon. Ryan and Brendon and I. Whichever's right, Ryan's the grammar nazi. Do you think it's gonna last?"  
  
It's a loaded question if ever there was one. "I...don't know?" Jon answers honestly. "I guess that's up to you guys."  
Another weird expression crosses Spencer's face. He pulls the sheet up over his head. “C’mere,” he says.  
  
“What?”  
  
“Get under the sheet, I wanna tell you something.”  
  
Jon laughs, surprised, as he swings his feet back out of his bed and rolls over to sit on the edge of Spencer's. “Are we building a fort? You know the monsters can still see you – ow,” he adds as Spencer kicks him. Dude has sharp toenails.  
  
“Get under here, asshole." Spencer is rarely this goofy. It doesn't surprise Jon that he's business-like about it.  
  
It takes some wriggling, but Jon tucks in under the sheet, too. The light outside shines through the light-bluish cotton, casting a soft hue over everything. Spencer blinks at him, damp hair mussed and his arms folded across his chest. Only Spencer Smith could appear defensive while lying on his back in a hotel bed in his pajamas.  
  
Jon gets comfy and rubs his nose back and forth against the sheet a bit. “So?”  
  
Spencer bites at his lip. Finally he murmurs, “I don’t have a magic user manual.”  
  
There’s more, but he just looks at Jon like he’s waiting. Jon frowns, turning it over in his head with a trace of amusement. His bandmates all speak in different tongues, and Spencer’s is especially difficult to master; his cards never leave his chest. Clearly he’s freaking out about something, but Jon has no idea what – he’d expect to be having this conversation with Ryan, or Brendon, but they’ve seemed pretty okay recently, and –-  
  
“Oh,” Jon says.  
  
“Right,” Spencer replies, because apparently he’s got Jon all figured out. Then, so soft Jon can barely hear it, “They’re both older than me.”  
  
Jon swallows and shifts a bit closer, keeping his hands to himself but making the offer. Spencer’s arms don’t uncross from his chest, but he bends his neck to rest his temple against Jon’s shoulder. It can’t be comfortable. After a moment of hesitation, Jon brings his arm up and wriggles it under Spencer’s head. Spencer huffs irritably, like he’s the one being put-upon here. He doesn’t move away.  
  
Once they’re settled again, Jon says, “They’re a lot, huh?”  
  
“They’re a fucking _ton_ ,” Spencer says with his eyes closed. “And they’re older and they’re…two of them, you know? When it was just Ryan, I could, like, I knew, sometimes, what to do? And then Brendon came and then Ryan changed and I’m totally making this up as I go, Jon. Jon. I could fuck up at any moment.”  
  
“Hey, hey, come on. You guys are doing fine.”  
  
“Any moment!” Spencer unclasps his arms for an abortive flail that sends the sheet spiking upward, then quickly folds back up again.  
  
“Okay.” Jon bends his elbow and pushes his hand up against the sheet, making a little tentpole that gives them both some breathing room. “I think we’d still be okay, if you did.”  
  
“How can you say that?” Spencer huffs. His eyes are shut tight again, but the edges look damp. “You know what they’re like. I mean, you know. You’re here, and that’s really fucking – but they’re.” He jerks his shoulder, like he wants to flail around again but doesn’t dare.  
  
Jon hesitates for a long moment then tries as carefully as possible. “You’ve got a right to – ”  
  
“ _No_.” Spencer’s shoulders are like iron against Jon’s arm. “I love them. I love them more than – no. I want this, I’m just not sure I know how.”  
  
“Okay,” Jon murmurs. He feels pretty lost, here, too. “If it’s what you want.”  
  
“I want. I want to not fuck up.”  
  
Jon reaches over with his other hand, lightly touches Spencer’s hair. “We all do, Spence.”  
  
The sensation of iron loosens as Spencer exhales loudly then rolls closer, accidentally kicking Jon’s calf again. “You know, for a straight guy, you do a lot of cuddling,” he informs Jon’s armpit.  
  
“Tell me about it,” Jon groans. Spencer tenses up again and Jon catches his shoulder. “Hey now. You’re okay. That wasn’t me complaining. Other straight guys don’t know what they’re missing.” Spencer coughs a laugh and Jon smiles, patting his shoulder lightly. “Get some sleep, yeah?”  
  
“’Kay,” Spencer murmurs, sounding stupidly kidlike. The next moment, though, he comes out with, “Don’t tell them any of this, okay?”  
  
“Spence. Dude. You can’t just keep – ”  
  
“Yes I can. I did it for years with Ryan. I’ll be fine.”  
  
“And what if you start feeling like this again?”  
  
“Then I’ll take a night off and cuddle our token straight guy.” Spencer shifts, bumping his head against Jon’s shoulder like the punctuation of a sentence. “What time do we gotta get up tomorrow?”  
  
Jon sighs. The sheet above his mouth flutters. There’s no way that Spencer doesn’t know, down to the minute, their daily schedule. “6 am. Interview. Kerrang, I think?”  
  
“Mmm. ‘Kay.”  
  
He drops off quickly, going slack against Jon’s side. Jon uses his opposite leg to pinch the blanket with his toes and pull it up to their waists. His arm is going numb.  
  
He doesn’t know what to do, either. Spencer’s not wrong. They all depend on him, obviously more than they should. Jon helps, yeah, he’s not stupid, Spencer came to him with this; but Jon has helped pass off two of the most high-maintenance people he knows onto the kid hiding under a sheet.  
  
It’s not fair. Right now he doesn’t see any other way that it can work.  
  
After a while his cell phone buzzes in his pocket. Moving as little as possible, Jon digs it out. _meet n hal top sekrit xxxx_  
  
He works his arm free from beneath Spencer’s head, wincing at the sensation of pins in his fingertips. Spencer rolls onto his own back with an unhappy murmur.  
  
The hall is empty except for Zack, who is shirtless and stone-faced and haphazardly covered in pink paint and glitter. They stare at each other for a long moment, Jon standing outside his and Spencer’s door and Zack outside the open door to Ryan and Brendon’s room. Finally, wordlessly, Zack points through the door.  
  
“Do I wanna know?” Jon asks.  
  
“No,” Zack replies. It sounds like a threat.  
  
“Okay,” Jon says, biting the inside of his lip to keep from smiling as he passes. It’d probably be the last thing he does.  
  
Inside, Tom is sprawled facedown over the foot of one bed, snoring. Brendon is crouched near his head, holding a glass of water and poking Tom’s shoulder. Ryan stands with his butt leaning against the dresser, his arms loosely folded across his stomach, clearly torn between feeling judgmental and amused. “Your friend drinks too much,” he tells Jon as he enters.  
  
“He lost his guys,” Jon says with a shrug. It’s not an excuse, but it’s the only reason that they would all be able to understand. “Did he do anything crazy?” he asks, reaching out a hand to Brendon.  
  
Brendon gives him the water and climbs to his feet. There's pink, dried paint on his palms and under his fingernails. “He told us we were being bad boyfriends.”  
  
Jon freezes, warily looking between them. A raw expression twists Ryan’s face and he looks toward the window. “I already knew that.”  
  
Brendon rolls his eyes hard. He’s in jeans and a leather jacket and eyeliner and his hair sticks up sharply. He looks hip and sharp and completely unlike the miserable huddle of a boy who Jon had held together in the summertime. “Yeah, that’s kinda the fucking problem. You’re waiting to fuck it up and so am I.”  
  
Ryan straightens a bit and they lock eyes. It’s the same perpetual game of chicken. Only a few months ago Jon would have made some excuse to leave the room or tried to interrupt the staredown. Now he keeps silent. The glass of water sweats in his hand.  
  
“This is what Tom meant,” Brendon says slowly, unblinking. “There’s three of us in this, right? Not just two and two. There’s only one of him, but there’s two of us.” It sounds like a continued conversation, something they were saying to each other before Jon came in the room…maybe even before Jon came into this band.  
  
Ryan’s gaze narrows. “If you’re finally trying to pick me up,” he says in his flat monotone, “this is a weird way of doing it.”  
  
Brendon chuckles, still not looking away. “No. But we’re friends. Right? Friends help each other out.”  
  
The sound that Ryan makes isn’t a laugh, but it’s full of mockery all the same. None of it is directed at Brendon. “You really, really think that I – ”  
  
“Yes,” Jon says.  
  
They both look at him. He puts up one hand. “Speaking as the only sober person in the room who isn’t involved in a relationship that requires a flowchart – ”  
  
Brendon breaks into laughter, bright and delighted. Jon grins at him, then tells Ryan, “I can honestly look you in the eye and say yeah, you could help.”  
  
Ryan stares at him. “Tom said so, too.”  
  
“Did he now,” Jon says.  
  
“Yup,” Brendon confirms. “Then he jumped into the back of a limo full of sorority sisters and made out with a drag queen.”  
  
“Whoa. There was a drag queen in a sorority?”  
  
“No,” Ryan says. His face is completely straight. “That was after the sorority sisters. But before the naked painting.”  
  
“I…am not all that impressed. Remind me to tell you guys about that fishing boat incident sometime.”  
  
Brendon bounces over to him, snaking his spider-monkey arms around Jon’s neck. “Chicago boys are the _best_.”  
  
“Hey,” Ryan says.  
  
“Fine, _second_ best,” Brendon amends, squeezing Jon to the point of choking then letting go. “Speaking of which.”  
  
“Sleeping.” Jon hands over his key card. “Trade you? I’ve got a Chicago boy to take care of.”  
  
“Righteous. C’mon, Ryan Ross, our Sleeping Beauty awaits.”  
  
He charges from the room with a whoop. Outside, Zack makes a noise like a bear being poked with a cattleprod. Jon winces, laughing, and Ryan smiles slightly. He still eyes Jon. “Exactly how do you manage to be in this band without, like…?”  
  
“Becoming gay by osmosis?”  
  
Ryan laughs, short but real. "I was gonna say, 'losing your mind,' but okay."  
  
Jon shrugs. “You’re my guys.”  
  
It’s clear that Ryan doesn’t follow that logic, but either he trusts that Jon knows what he’s doing or he’s way more concerned with following Brendon; both options seem promising. He does step forward and awkwardly fold his skinny arms around Jon’s shoulders. “That’s…nice. I mean…” He shrugs in Jon’s grip and pulls away too quickly, shrugs again.  
  
“Admit it,” Jon says gently. “Chicago boys are the best.”  
  
Ryan recovers himself enough to roll his eyes. “Yeah, sure. The drag queens of the world send their regards.”  
  
He leaves. Jon sits down beside Tom’s head with the water glass held between his knees. Tom snores in his sleep, loud and piglike.  
  
Next door there’s the sound of a door closing, then faint voices. They sound gentle, warm; something solid. Jon reaches out and gingerly ruffles Tom’s hair. There’s pink paint caked on the tips, dried to a crunchy crust that’ll be hell to pick out in the morning. Jon will help, after he’s done laughing at him.  
  
“You’re made of _magic_ , Tom Conrad,” he murmurs. His face hurts from grinning so hard. “Magic and cheap liquor.”  
  
Tom snores again.


End file.
